Tag: Conservative Values

Old spooks club: In his recent column on George Bush’s military takeover of U.S. intelligence services Jon noted that “Using the military to fight a civilian force like al Qaeda is like using a chainsaw to perform an appendectomy.” His expressed concern was that the military and its contractors are already too close, and handing the intelligence agencies to the military creates a serious problem. True, but maybe the real bad news is not that these guys are former military, but that they are former intel operatives.

Shane Harris of National Journal has an alternate take on the military-intel triumverate. He seems to think it’s a positive thing that the new intel heads have all been intel heads before, as well as military officers, but leavens his analysis with just enough negative stuff to come off not sounding quite like a cheerleader for the spy team. He offers this sketch of the players:

In this new intelligence constellation, there are four key players, each of whom has led a major agency at least once. On January 5, President Bush nominated retired Navy Vice Adm. Mike McConnell, a former director of the National Security Agency, to be the second director of national intelligence. It falls to him as DNI to continue post-9/11 intelligence reforms and to act as a chief operating officer for the government’s 16 intelligence agencies.

Next is new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has his hands on 80 percent of the intelligence budget and so has the most muscle to flex. A former CIA director, Gates will bring a keen understanding of civilian intelligence operations to his job.

Days before McConnell’s nomination was announced, Gates asked retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, a deeply experienced uniformed intelligence officer, to take over the top spy job in the Pentagon, the undersecretary for intelligence. Clapper will replace a controversial civilian political appointee, Stephen Cambone, who was a close ally of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and had little career intelligence experience.

Clapper has held two top jobs, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite and aerial imagery and data.

Harris makes it sound like these guys get together for golf outings, barbecues and wife-swapping:

McConnell, Gates, and Clapper also have a friend in recently installed CIA Director Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force general who rounds out the new team. Hayden, who has been busy beefing up the CIA’s human spying efforts, appointed a career clandestine officer as his No. 2. Hayden is professionally close to McConnell and Gates, and several former officials said that he and Clapper are “old friends.”

“Here you have very trusted players who have been around each other for a long period of time,” said Fred Burton, a former special agent for counter-terrorism in the State Department who’s now the vice president of counter-terrorism and corporate security for Stratfor, a private intelligence firm. Those relationships, perhaps more than anything else, bode well for their chances of success, Burton said.

While McConnell was leading the NSA in the early 1990s, Clapper was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Gates was head of the CIA. Hayden held key positions on the National Security Council and in military intelligence, and he took over the NSA in 1999. Also, when McConnell was the military official in charge of intelligence for Operation Desert Storm, Clapper was the assistant chief of staff for Air Force intelligence and played a leading role in coordinating the air war.

[…]

Stink tank: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum has landed at a Beltway think tank following his royal pasting in the midterm elections, according to Congressional Quarterly. The irony of Santorum — never known for his thoughtful, measured rhetoric — going to work for something called a “think” tank was not lost on us.

The 48-year-old Santorum will head a program at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy focusing on “America’s Enemies.” According to the center, Santorum will examine a “growing array of anti-Western forces that are increasingly casting a shadow over our future.”

It’s pretty clear who Santorum believes America’s enemies are: His valedictory speech in the Senate Dec. 6 focused on “Islamic fascists” as the prime threat to the United States.

Santorum, in fact, had sought throughout his 2006 Senate campaign to portray himself as tougher in the war on terror than his highly touted Democratic challenger, Bob Casey, then the state treasurer and namesake son of a popular former governor.

But Santorum’s overall image as a conservative hardliner — on social and economic issues as well as on national security — made him highly vulnerable in an Eastern swing state where voters have increasingly been leaning Democratic, especially in an election year when the national tide was running strong against the Republican Party. CQPolitics.com, throughout the campaign, had Santorum rated as the underdog.

Nonetheless, most observers were stunned by the blowout margin by which Santorum was sent packing. Casey won the race by 59 percent to 41 percent, with a margin of more than 700,000 votes.

Really bad idea: Nevada state Sen. Bob Beers believes that the best deterrent to gun violence in schools is an armed force of teachers. Beers is proposaing legislation that would make it legal for teachers to bear arms in the classroom after passing a firearm safety course.

“I would expect enough teachers would be interested (in taking guns to school) so it would serve as a deterrent,” said Beers, a failed gubernatorial candidate.

“We have banned guns in schools in Nevada and most of the rest of the nation for the last 20 years,” Beers said. “Part of the problem is a small percentage of the population is brought up without a knowledge of and respect for guns.

“We need to have discussions on school violence,” Beers added. “It appears to me there is an escalating frequency of these tragedies. In the wrong hands, a gun is a dangerous tool.”

Of course, most people in Nevada think it’s a bad idea to arm teachers. But apparently not in neighboring Utah:

Whether teachers and other school officials should be allowed to carry weapons on campus has been hotly debated in neighboring Utah.

Unlike Nevada, Utah concealed-weapons permit holders can legally bring guns onto campuses. But Utah school districts have differing policies on where the weapons can be legally stashed, with some school systems barring their storage in desks or coat closets on campus.

Some Utahans have called for more teachers to receive weapons training. A Salt Lake City-area firearms instructor began offering free classes in October to teachers seeking concealed-weapons permits, according to media reports.

Conservative condolences: John Bolton’s tenure as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was over with the Democrat’s ascendency at the midterm elections, but to hear our favorite ultra-right winger tell it, this is just another sign that the country is going to hell in a hippie’s handbasket.

Here’s the statement Richard A. Viguerie, author of “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause, ” issued today via e-mail about Bolton’ s resignation:

There are only a mere handful of conservatives in significant policy-making positions in the Bush administration. The withdrawal of Ambassador Bolton means there is one less. This is very discouraging to conservatives. Instead of fighting for Ambassador Bolton’s confirmation, the Bush Administration has once again thrown in the towel.

Come on, Dick, Bush has to pick his fights carefully now, and going to the mat for the moustachioed one would have been a sure loss.

Since the election, President Bush has sent strong signals that he will move left and seek accommodation with the Democrats who will be running the House and Senate. The President is following in the footsteps of his father, George H. W. Bush, who also abandoned the conservative base of the GOP.

Whoa, I must have missed the speech where Bush vowed to “move left and seek accommodation” with the Dems. All I’ve heard was, “Rummie, you’re fired” and “we’re stayin’ the course.” If only George had followed in his father’s footsteps ….

In addition to surrendering on the Bolton nomination, another danger signal for conservatives was the President’s comments at his Nov. 8 news conference that he will work with the liberals to grant amnesty to illegal aliens. Still another was Treasury Secretary Paulson’s statement that the Bush Administration had ‘no preconditions’ on Social Security reform, which is code for a willingness to accept higher payroll taxes and cuts in benefits.

Obviously, Viguerie is tuned in to a whole different wavelength, sucking his conservative news direct from aliens who enhabit the Van Allen Belt. Bush isn’t going to grant “amnesty” for illegals, and he’s going to leave SocSec to the next administration to try to fix.

It looks like the next two years will be painful for conservatives and possibly fatal for the Republican Party.

Would that it could only be the other way around, Richard.

Great letter to the editor in my local paper today, which in the interest of “fairness” runs Ann Coulter’s column. They do it, they say, to balance out Molly Ivins. As if.

Anyway, first part of Ann’s original diatribe:

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting “Allah, Allah, Allah” — coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died…

And then the knock-out punch from one Brad Cooper:

Editor: Ann Coulter’s column…was especially ignorant, even for her. To praise US Airways for ejecting imams traveling to a conference because they were, well, imams and were not hiding their faith, is an expression of the worst irrational anti-Muslim xenophobia since rednecks cheered the bombing of mosques.

US Airways’ rationale for ejecting the imams from the flight was insulting and shows just how little we’ve learned about Islam since 9/11. For Coulter to praise them for this show of timidity and ignorance highlights her own timidity and ignorance. So what is the real reason behind the anxiety about some religious clerics that disagree with Coulter’s myopic neo-con views being refused passage? I think it’s more a case of Coulter trying to remain relevant in a country that no longer believes simple, ignorant “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” arguments.

St. Augustine Record, I urge you to stop carrying her race-baiting, insulting, mean-spirited diatribes. She’s not a thoughtful conservative, she’s nothing more than Ed Anger wearing Prada.

Right is as right does: One of my favorite crackpot right-wingers, Richard Viguerie, who thinks Barry Goldwater was almost conservative enough, has issued a broadside maligning the Republican “leadership” on Capitol Hill. Under the headline, “GOP Definition of Insanity — Keep the Same Leaders and Expect Different Results,” he writes:

House Republicans have decided to reward failure.

Republicans are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander through the desert for 40 years until that generation of corrupt and immoral leaders had passed from the scene.

Republicans are like the Biblical Jews who had to wander through the desert for 40 years until that generation of corrupt and immoral leaders had passed from the scene.

And Republicans are not going to get to the political Promised Land until they get new leaders who are principled conservatives.

President Bush and congressional Republican leaders in recent years seemed to have adopted a one-word strategy for governing — BRIBERY.

In essence they’ve said to the voters — we’ve got money, you’ve got votes — let’s talk.

But the House Republicans who today selected John Boehner and Roy Blunt as their leaders clearly haven’t gotten the message that the voters sent them November 7: We will not reward Republicans who engage in bribery, expand government and ignore social issues.

Boehner and Blunt’s close ties to big government lobbyists indicates that the Republican Party will continue to represent Corporate America over the interests of Main Street America.

As television psychologist Dr. Phil would say, How’s that working for you, Republicans?

Much as I think Viguerie is as full of it as a port-o-potty at a chili cook-off, I kind of agree with him, though not for the same reasons. Viguerie’s view is that real conservatives — as opposed to Bushco’s neocon lites — would bring back Christian values and disciplined principles to the political process.

To me, it’s about losing losers lost in la-la land. I mean, here are the Repugs, less than a fortnight after getting soundly trounced in the midterms, putting into place the same old leaders who lost the House and Senate. Trent Lott’s “rehabilitation” is a prime example that the elephant party plans to stick with what doesn’t work, and public opinion be damned. If they can just keep that up for the next couple of years ….